Television
Contempt and humiliation
Simon Hoggart Television programmes divide into two groups — those which are made with love, and those which are made with contempt. Obviously anything featuring Dale Winton has contempt for the viewer. (Sony, Dale, you're a lovely, lovely man, but every show you're in is ghastly and, worse, known to be ghastly by the people who make it.) Jim Davidson is contempt for the viewer made flesh. So are the National Lottery Show and Blind Date, in which little is as it seems. (I once heard from a researcher about a cou- ple who were instructed to sit on the sofa and say how much they had loathed each other, just five minutes after they'd been found having it off in the hospitality room.) I'm not saying that some contemptuous shows don't have their moments. I've even watched Supermarket Sweep, though I cringe when I see people humiliate them- selves for the £2,000 star prize — rarely given away, and a fraction of what Dale Winton must earn for each show. Big Brother (Channel 4) has a thoroughgoing contempt for its audience as well as its par- ticipants. (The viewing figures are, so far, rather disappointing. The first, massively publicised, episode drew 3.6 million view- ers, which is huge for a minority channel, though this dropped to 1.9 million for the next programme. Possibly figures will climb again when more contestants are booted out of the house. Perhaps five boring peo- ple are only half as tedious as ten boring people, though I'm not certain it works like that. This week's special task, to cycle the equivalent of Lands End to John O'Groats on an exercise bike, was as dreary a chunk of television as I can recall.) The first fly-on-the-wall documentaries, such as The Family, were made with huge affection and regard for the viewer, as were Molly Dineen's work, though she is head- ing, I fear, towards the 'Pretentious, moi?' columns. Later docu-soaps were more con- temptuous, and anything which features 'hitherto unseen video footage' of hedge- hogs being run over by lorries — or indeed anything else — is dripping with contempt.
Fawhy Towers, by contrast, was put together with so much love that they couldn't make more than a dozen; the effort and emotional strain were too much for John Cleese and Connie Booth. I watched the hotel inspector episode on Sunday (BBC 1) and laughed even more than I did when I first saw it. This is like see- ing a favourite painting for the tenth time; at first you gasp at the overall effect, after which you can enjoy admiring the stupefy- ingly faultless technique. This was followed by the start of what may be the 648th series of As Time Goes By, starring Judi Dench and Geoffrey Palmer, both of whom are wonderful actors, though neither can save a show which has become rather like the age- ing marriage it depicts: affectionate rather than passionate, gentle rather than loving, grumpy, fundamentally good-natured and almost entirely free from jokes. As with The Last Of The Summer Wine, the love is replaced by a certain complacent routine.
A Family Century (Channel 4) was made with lashings of love. It had a bad start. The lives of the Carpenter family of Not- tingham, told up to 1930 by the four surviv- ing sisters, produced every cliche we've ever seen: 'sugar pigs, liquorice sticks, and I used to love the taste of Sharp's toffee', followed smartly by 'men were doomed to die together on the western front' plus a few ragged labourers in dole queues. So far, so predictable. Then suddenly it became a soap opera, with the same dra- mas and plot twists, only this time painful- ly, horribly real. Madge, 92, had been a roaring snob, and looked down on her sis- ter's boyfriend, the son of a miner, whose rough language appalled the family when he came round to visit. 'Poor Arthur,' said his wife Joyce recalling one of those mind- scarring moments which never quite leave you, 'wanted to break wind, but was afraid to ask.' Whereas Madge and her young man Charles did nothing more than kiss and cuddle, Arthur and Joyce nipped into the parents' bed as soon as they were away. 'Only the milkman knew,' she said, though how he found out, she didn't say.
Prematurely born twins died. A teenage sister died of TB. It turned out that father had a long affair with a secretary at work, and when he died they found a photo of an unknown baby in his wallet. Later we're promised a changeling child. Letting peo- ple describe their lives in their own words and with their own emphases, illustrated by little more than old snaps from a shoe box, is poignant, informative, entertaining and, yes, loving.
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